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Twitter and Facebook remove Trump post alleging children “mostly immune” to COVID-19

While Facebook has been hesitant to police US President Donald Trump in the past, it seems Trump finally found the line Facebook is not willing to cross.

On Wednesday a video that included a Fox News interview with Trump was posted to the president’s Facebook Page. That interview contained a false claim that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.

“If you look at children, children are almost, and I would almost say definitely, but almost immune from this disease. So few, they’ve got stronger, hard to believe, I don’t know how you feel about it, but they have much stronger immune system than we do, somehow, for this. And they don’t have a problem. They just don’t have a problem,” Trump said in the interview.

Rambling aside, children are not immune to COVID-19. While symptoms may be milder than in cases affecting adults, children can still get the disease.

Facebook took action against the post containing the interview as it contained the false claim above.

“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” Facebook policy spokesperson, Andy Stone, told NBC News.

The same video was posted to Twitter before it was removed for violating Twitter’s policy on COVID-19 misinformation. The Team Trump account which posted the clip was also suspended for a few hours.

While Trump did not comment on the removal of the post the Team Trump account retweeted a number of tweets that claimed the person who announced the tweet’s removal once worked for Kamala Harris.

Of course, Trump has already started the process of limiting protections that social media firms enjoy.

Last week Trump’s administration filed a petition imploring the Federal Communications Commission to create new rules to clarify Section 230 for the era of social media.

At the end of the day we’re glad to see that Facebook finally found the legs it needed to stand up to Trump. How long that will last remains to be seen.

[Image – CC BY SA Gage Skidmore]

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